Product reviews for The Learning Imperative

This is a real workhorse of a book: so much excellent information, intelligently structured and supported with - as you'd expect from a book on learning and development - a strong pedagogical framework.

A book on learning really does have to walk the talk to be credible, and this book delivers. There's a good balance of theory and practice with just enough stories in just enough detail to be helpful without becoming distracting. None of it feels ground-breaking, but some elements - like the impact of relational trust on learning (the 'glue' of the team) and the need for managers to put in place protocols that create 'unconditional positive regard' in the workplace to facilitate that - hit me with the force of unrecognised truth.

Burns and Griffith's REFRESH model (Resilience, Enquiring, Feedback, Revising, Effortful, Sharing, Habitual), despite its irritating mix of nouns and adjectives, is a useful model for checking the impact of the various issues and interventions they raise, and the REFRESH reading lists at the end of each chapter are superb - the best books are not only worth reading themselves, but point the reader on to other great resources, and this book does that brilliantly.

The Learning Imperative was the winner of the HR & Management category of the Business Book Awards in 2019 and it's easy to see why: the judges described it as 'a refreshingly simple text explaining a complex topic perfectly for its intended target audience', and I couldn't agree more.

Click here to read the review on Good Reads website.